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[–] ubergeek77 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

Hmmm... I don't know how personal this is or if I'm right to ask it, but could you give us a ballpark figure of how much you make? You say 5 years, so I assume you're happy there and make enough to sustain yourself, so you don't need a job on the side for bills or anything? Also, what kind of people are your average clients?

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[–] Mister_Sparkle [S] 0 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago  (edited ago)

If I was filling out a survey, I'd check the box for

☑ $25,000-49,999

Not enough to buy a house in the part of the US where I live, but enough to comfortably rent an apartment with another person who's working. I don't work a second job, but some of my co-workers do. I could certainly make more working somewhere else, but the money and hassle of not commuting is worth quite a bit to me. Also, I'm much happier now that I'm not dealing with customers directly.

When I was dealing with customers, they were mostly retail store customers who would buy a service, and we would connect remotely. I did not stay on the phone long enough to get to know most of them that well, because I would get connected to their computer and get off the phone as quickly as I could. Because of the nature of the services, we were dealing with people who were not very computer literate. Example: More than once I had a customer ask me if we could install a printer while it was still in the box, and once while it was still in the car.

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[–] janx 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

Tech support is a big window. What complexity of enquiries were you having to deal with?

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[–] Mister_Sparkle [S] 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

Originally I was working mostly with customers whose computers were infected with viruses, with some more mundane tasks periodically (printer installations and things of that nature). Now I am working with our tech support people making sure our software runs correctly on their computers, and dealing with system outages on the backend of their software.

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[–] janx 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

Is there a clear career progression path inside the company? Or did your own skills get you noticed and promoted to the different team? Do you miss contact with the general users?

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[–] ack 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago  (edited ago)

  • What did you major in/study?

  • What are your "hours" like? Or do you not keep regular hours?

  • Were you specifically looking for a job then? How did you stumble upon it? Do you look for jobs on CL usually?

  • Do you go to the office at all (ie to troubleshoot hardware stuff, for meetings, etc)?

  • Does your company hire a lot of other people to do the same thing (ie customer tech support from home)? Is this because of space limitations at the office or something? Do they give you an allowance for hardware, transport, etc?

  • Do you have a side job?

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[–] Mister_Sparkle [S] 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

  1. My major was in English, actually. I've worked in banking and aviation and somehow ended up in IT.
  2. I work the overnight shift, which suits me because I'm a night person, and I get paid extra to do less work :)
  3. I got laid off from my aviation job, and got bored after 6 months of FUNemployment. So, I decided to see what was up on Craigslist one night, and answered the ad for this company because it was the only one that seemed legit. I don't normally look for jobs on CL, but I wasn't too seriously looking for this job anyway.
  4. The home office is almost 400 miles from my house. If there's an outage, I call the people who manage the computers directly. For individual agents, I can remote into their PCs for troubleshooting just like I used to do with customers. They're (usually) smarter than customers, so 95% of the time I can just talk them through it. We do our meetings with GoToMeeting software.
  5. They are hiring like crazy right now doing white-label tech support for a national client, but it's mostly talking customers through installing routers. There are a lot of upsides to telecommuting for a company: No need to maintain a building, full coverage across multiple time zones, no single point of failure for a building's network, happier employees, little to no office politics or drama, &c. There are downsides, though, the biggest of which is not everyone is cut out to do this. "Work avoidance" is a big hot-button issue here. 50¢ an hour of my pay is for equipment, and they gave me a free USB headset.

  6. Nothing that pays. I fancy myself a DJ, but have never made more than gas money, and stick to alternative scenes. Steve Aoki has nothing to fear from me.

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[–] Kylan 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

Support.com?

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[–] Mister_Sparkle [S] 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

You know I can't answer that.
Even if I could, I'd be reluctant to.
Surely you knew that when you asked, though.

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[–] Kylan 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

Naw, I found a different company. Didn't know if you could say anything or not, never worked for them before. I've seen Lionbridge, Leapforce, and Support.com all advertise on Craigslist but I wasn't sure if it was one of them.

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[–] woofWOOFwoof 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

Did you have any doubts or fears when you were considering working there, having found it on Craigslist?

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[–] Mister_Sparkle [S] ago  (edited ago)

The biggest doubt I had was whether or not it was a legitimate company. I did a lot of searching before applying, though. Other than that, I was still in a mode where I was taking a really cavalier attitude toward looking for work, so I didn't really worry about much. Some of my friends who were struggling to find jobs were not happy that I got the first and only job I applied for.

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[–] lolmilk 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

What was the interview process like? Since you majored in English, how much IT experience did you need previous to landing the job?

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[–] Mister_Sparkle [S] ago 

The process consisted of an online test, followed by two interviews: a technical interview and a personal interview. Both interviews were done by telephone. At the time I had no IT certs and only about 2 years of informal experience from the aviation company I worked for.